Thrill of the chaste: The truth about Gandhi's sex life

It was no secret that Mohandas Gandhi had an unusual sex life. He spoke constantly of sex and gave detailed, often provocative, instructions to his followers as to how to they might best observe chastity. And his views were not always popular; "abnormal and unnatural" was how the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi's advice to newlyweds to stay celibate for the sake of their souls.

But was there something more complex than a pious plea for chastity at play in Gandhi's beliefs, preachings and even his unusual personal practices (which included, alongside his famed chastity, sleeping naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint)? In the course of researching my new book on Gandhi, going through a hundred volumes of his complete works and many tomes of eye-witness material, details became apparent which add up to a more bizarre sexual history.

Much of this material was known during his lifetime, but was distorted or suppressed after his death during the process of elevating Gandhi into the "Father of the Nation" Was the Mahatma, in fact, as the pre-independence prime minister of the Indian state of Travancore called him, "a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac"?

Gandhi was born in the Indian state of Gujarat and married at 13 in 1883; his wife Kasturba was 14, not early by the standards of Gujarat at that time. The young couple had a normal sex life, sharing a bed in a separate room in his family home, and Kasturba was soon pregnant.

Two years later, as his father lay dying, Gandhi left his bedside to have sex with Kasturba. Meanwhile, his father drew his last breath. The young man compounded his grief with guilt that he had not been present, and represented his subsequent revulsion towards "lustful love" as being related to his father's death.

However, Gandhi and Kasturba's last child wasn't born until fifteen years later, in 1900.

In fact, Gandhi did not develop his censorious attitude to sex (and certainly not to marital sex) until he was in his 30s, while a volunteer in the ambulance corps, assisting the British Empire in its wars in Southern Africa. On long marches in sparsely populated land in the Boer War and the Zulu uprisings, Gandhi considered how he could best "give service" to humanity and decided it must be by embracing poverty and chastity.

At the age of 38, in 1906, he took a vow of brahmacharya, which meant living a spiritual life but is normally referred to as chastity, without which such a life is deemed impossible by Hindus.

Gandhi found it easy to embrace poverty. It was chastity that eluded him. So he worked out a series of complex rules which meant he could say he was chaste while still engaging in the most explicit sexual conversation, letters and behaviour.

With the zeal of the convert, within a year of his vow, he told readers of his newspaper Indian Opinion: "It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife."

Meanwhile, Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way. He set up ashrams in which he began his first "experiments" with sex; boys and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely, but were punished for any sexual talk. Men and women were segregated, and Gandhi's advice was that husbands should not be alone with their wives, and, when they felt passion, should take a cold bath.

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Le Cercle: Private bridge between Vatican-Paneuropean and Anglo-American intelligence

From: Le Cercle and the struggle for the European continent by Joël van der Reijden

Le Cercle is a secretive, privately-funded and transnational discussion group which regularly meets in different parts of the world. It is attended by a mixture of politicians, ambassadors, bankers, shady businessmen, oil experts, editors, publishers, military officers and intelligence agents, which may or may not have retired from their official functions. The participants come from western or western-oriented countries. Many important members tend to be affiliated with the aristocratic circles in London or obscure elements within the Vatican, and accusations of links to fascism and Synarchism are anything but uncommon in this milieu. The greatest enemy of the Cercle has been the Soviet Union and members have been crusading against communist subversion for many decades. During this process, Cercle members unfortunately have accused almost every nationalist and socialist government, every labour union, every terrorist, and every serious investigator of western intelligence of being in bed with the KGB.

In addition, the Cercle is also strongly focused on European integration, going back to the efforts of its early members to bring about Franco-German rapprochement. The significant presence of Paneuropa-affiliated Opus Dei members and Knights of Malta, together with statements of the Vatican and Otto von Habsburg, clearly indicate there's an agenda in the background to some day bring about a new Holy Roman Empire with its borders stretching from the Atlantic to the Black Sea and from the Baltic Sea to North Africa. Interestingly, the latest generation of British Cercle members, whose predecessors were keen on joining the European Union, now do everything in their power to keep Britain out of the emerging European superstate, having lost faith they can become a significant force within Europe. Their American associates, however, would like for them to continue the effort of breaking into the Franco-German alliance and possibly to establish a new Anglo-German alliance.

It seems like a cold war is raging in Europe. One that doesn't directly involve the Soviets.

[ ... ]

When WWII broke out, Monnet was one of the most important individuals in contact with both the French resistance and the Churchill government. While in London at the time that France was overrun, Monnet proposed to General Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the French government in exile, the creation of a Franco-British Union; a plan to completely unite France and Britain. The Churchill government accepted, even a desperate de Gaulle accepted, but eventually the (supposedly Synarchist) opposition in France, headed by Marshall Petain, killed the plan. They saw it as an attempt of Britain to wrestle control over France. Petain subsequently became the leader of Vichy France.

After the war, Monnet was appointed by de Gaulle to reorganize the French economy. But Monnet also began to reorganize the whole of Europe.

Together with an equally mysterious Joseph Retinger (connected to both MI6 and the Vatican; founder of Bilderberg), who was raised by European nobility (21), Monnet organized the May 1948 Congress of Europe, which met under the auspices of the United Europe Movement in The Hague. Chairman was Winston Churchill, whose son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, worked closely with Joseph Retinger and CIA heads Allen Dulles and Bill Donovan. Later Cercle members as Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer were in attendance, just as Alcide de Gasperi and Paul Henri Spaak. The CIA would become the primary source of funding for the United European Movement in the following decades (22).

In 1949, with the support of Adenauer, Robert Schuman proposed the so called "Schuman Plan", which became the basis for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). It was established in 1952 and is usually seen as the birth of the European Union. In reality, Monnet, who became the first chairman of the ECSC's High Authority, had entirely written the "Schuman Plan". And interestingly, even this might only partially be true, as Monnet's structure for Europe turned out to be a slightly adapted version of Arthur Salter's 1931 paper 'The United States of Europe', which originally advocated a federal Europe within the framework of the League of Nations (23). Both men worked high up in the League of Nations and had a close relationship to the leading Anglo-American families, as has already been discussed.

One year later, on 24 October 1950, the French prime minister René Pleven introduced his "Pleven Plan". As happened earlier with Schuman, who didn't support this latest proposal, this document too had been written entirely by Jean Monnet (although he might have discussed it with his friend Arthur Salter). It proposed the creation of the European Defence Community (EDC): a Paneuropean defense force. Eventually this proposal was defeated by the Gaullist nationalists in France, and Europe's defense forces remained part of the newly-established NATO, which was (and is) mostly international, instead of supranational.

After the failure of his European Defence Community (EDC), Monnet doubled his efforts and founded the very low-profile Action Committee for the United States of Europe (ACUSE). It brought together leading international members of governments and labour unions, mainly to discuss European economic integration. ACUSE, together with the US State Department, lobbied and pressured a great deal behind the scenes in the run up to the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which created the actual European Economic Community (EEC; "Economic" was dropped in '91). All of Monnet's most important associates in this process were members of the Pilgrims Society: David K.E. Bruce, the Dulles brothers, John J. McCloy, George Ball, C. Douglas Dillon, and president Eisenhower. Cercle member Konrad Adenauer was among the signers of the treaty, just as Paul Henri Spaak. Also, the founding vice president of the ACUSE was Max Kohnstamm, who became the initial 1973 European chairman of the Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission. Kohnstamm used to be private secretary to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Antoine Pinay was another important member of ACUSE, the organization that Time Magazine dubbed a "European shadow government" in 1969 (24).

In 1961, Monnet managed to replace the OEEC, initially established to oversee the Marshall Plan, with the broader Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (25). The OECD since then has been one of the most influential institutions promoting globalization and free trade, today working in partnership with the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization. Mainland European governors of the Atlantic Institute of International Affairs, which also was founded in 1961, have had a relatively strong presence in these institutions, especially in the OECD. Pilgrims Society members have been dominant in the other institutions while the Vatican-connected Paneuropa members have always played a minor role in the institutions above and tend to criticize the Anglo-American Liberal establishment.

Around the same time Monnet replaced the OEEC with the OECD, he met with Edward Heath (As Lord Privy Seal 1960-1963 responsible for the initial talks to bring Britain into the European Common Market; head Conservative party 1965-1975; Conservative prime minister UK 1970-1974; very committed to the EU; a close Sun Myung Moon associate) at the house of his good friend David Drummond, the 17th Lord Perth (26), a member of an old aristocratic family with very good connections to both the Vatican and the highest levels in British society, including the Rothschilds, Oppenheimers, Mellons, Cecils, and Howards (27). Lord Perth was a chairman of the Ditchley Foundation and his father was the initial secretary-general of the League of Nations while Monnet was his deputy. Heath became a member of Monnet's Action Committee and in 1973 he signed Britain into the European Economic Community. This only became possible after De Gaulle had ceased to be president of France.

Monnet was an early supporter of de Gaulle, as he was of the opinion that this legendary general was the only person who might be able to reunite the French people after WWII. However, in later years some friction developed between these two men. De Gaulle was a nationalist who supported a strong intergovernmental Europe, preferably with France being the major influence. Monnet, on the other hand, was a no holds barred supranationalist.

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Neighbor: Armed robber forced Nova instructor to ATM, then killed him, set house ablaze

Who would want to kill scientist Joseph Morrissey, who enjoyed an international reputation for his pioneering research into the use of radio frequency waves in cancer treatment?

That's the question friends and colleagues were asking late Tuesday after Morrissey, 46, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Nova Southeastern University, was fatally shot during what police say was a home invasion robbery.

Morrissey was "very well-liked," said Andres Malave, dean of NSU's College of Pharmacy.

Just after midnight Monday, an intruder burst into his Plantation home, bound him and his wife, and set fire to the house in the 600 block of NW 75th Terrace, according to police.

A neighbor told WFOR-Ch. 4 that during the ordeal the robber also abducted the couple, took them to a nearby bank and forced them to make a cash withdrawal.

Morrissey's wife Linda, 48, and the couple's young son, who was asleep at the time, later escaped from the house and were not injured.

[ ... ]

Morrissey earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of South Florida and a PhD from Stanford University. He came to Florida in 1993 to work for the Goodwin Institute for Cancer Research in Plantation.

"He was so energetic. He enjoyed his life and his work," said Claire Thuning-Roberson, the founder and former director of the institute.

At NSU, Morrissey did research in the use of electromagnetic energy to enhance the effectiveness of cancer medications, the university said.

He recently brought in grants worth $100,000 to fund his work at NSU and was just back from delivering a keynote address at a conference in Australia.

"We lost a great individual, a great scientist, and someone who was to [help] move this college into the future," said Malave. "He was a key faculty member."

For 12 years he worked as a senior scientist at Motorola in Plantation.

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